


Hardest

by wisdomofthesea



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, descriptions of death and violence, just a little bit graphic, somewhere between tragedy and angst and hurt/comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-04
Updated: 2015-02-04
Packaged: 2018-03-10 12:13:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,980
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3289931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wisdomofthesea/pseuds/wisdomofthesea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first kill is not always the hardest. Vignettes on the first kills of Kirkwall’s cast—which are rarely the worst they experience.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hardest

_The first kill is the hardest._

Another of King Cailan’s soldiers tells her this in the barracks. Aveline holds her helmet in shaking hands and cannot forget that in the end, the bandit groaned the same way her father did on his deathbed.

Aveline grew up on stories of chivalrous Orlesian knights. Her armor is inherited from some former soldier, still unfamiliar, polished but not at all shining. She goes home and asks Wesley what the Maker thinks of her putting her sword through His creation.

He quotes, “Blessed are those who stand before the corrupt and wicked and do not falter.”

She had not faltered. She had followed orders.

She does not feel blessed.

King Cailan, for all his shining golden armor, does not survive Ostagar in the end. Neither does the soldier who once had time to comfort a fresh-faced recruit holding a bloodied helmet in her lap. Aveline and her husband limp away from the darkspawn, who she can kill with steady hands.

In the end, Aveline puts her sword through Wesley. She has no one to ask what the Maker thinks of that.

* * *

Naishe likes the feel of twin daggers in her hands. She revels in stealth and subterfuge and disappearing in a puff of smoke. No poison or arrows for her; Naishe wants to take credit for every move, not watch it happen from thirty feet away or hear of a slow death to soulrot hours later. Naishe makes it an art. Sharpest blade in Llomerryn, indeed.

Luis is not her kill. The blood is on Zevran’s blade, and Naishe doesn’t yet know how to hold a knife like it is part of her arm. She doesn’t even have her name yet.

Her first kill, boarding another ship from the _Siren’s Call_ , is effortless. She puts her knives into the other pirate’s back. He falls when she pulls them out. For good measure, she opens his throat. After the fight, she returns to his body and takes the bag of coin from his hip. She counts one sovereign, thirteen silver, and twenty-two coppers. She buys a pretty bandana, heavy earrings that Luis will never fondle, and a sharper blade.

Later still, Isabela takes a new name. She takes more coin and more lives. The wind is at her back and the salt tastes of freedom. If the first kill is supposed to be the hardest, Isabela is in for smooth sailing. **  
**

* * *

Carver’s is all wrong. When he is young, he imagines he will grow up and become a knight in service to Lothering. If he must kill anyone, it will be darkspawn and criminals.

A guard sees Father and Bethany practicing. There is no coin for a bribe, nothing for Carver to do but draw his weapon. Carver hesitates with the greatsword trembling in his fourteen-year-old hands, wide hands he has not quite grown into. His first swing misses. The guard is still bringing his shield to the front when Carver’s second blow makes contact.

The guard dies quietly, eyes staring skyward as his blood seeps into the grass. Father and Bethany do not even realize what has happened. Carver’s older sister—she is nineteen and charming and deft with her blades—finds him covered in blood, and silently cleans up. She strips the guard and drops his gear down a well. She dumps the body in a river. Upstream, Carver washes the blood from his hands and clothes.

His sister offers him the coin she found on the guard. Carver doesn’t want it. When they get home, his sister tells Mother she found the sovereigns in a broken crate by the side of the road. Mother thanks the Maker for the unexpected gold.

Carver is sick after dinner, cold and shaking and covered in sweat. Mother pats his back reassuringly as he sicks into a bush near the house, over and over, all night. When he sleeps, he has a nightmare, and wakes with bile and spit forcing themselves out of his throat. Mother whispers soothing things and asks if he needs a healer. Carver cannot even tell her why he is sick.

At dawn, Mother goes inside to fetch a cool cloth, and his older sister takes her place. She points at their little house. “They are all safe because of you,” she says. “Remember that. Our family would have been torn apart today if it were not for you.”

Carver remembers that. He is less jealous of Bethany’s magic now. He hates that magic separates him from his twin—but not having it means he can protect her. 

Their family has been torn apart enough by the time they leave Lothering. Father’s grave and the house they grew up in are lost to the darkspawn. Carver will not lose any more precious things to the Blight. When the ogre turns on his mother and sisters, Carver does not hesitate.

* * *

Merrill has never killed a person before she meets Hawke. The clan shuns her as a blood mage, but she only ever used her own blood. She has fired bolts of spirit energy and heaps of earth at darkspawn and giant spiders, but never at a person. Not until Kirkwall.

Kirkwall is huge and loud and bustling and empty. Merrill misses dirt and grass beneath her feet, so much softer and safer than stone paving. She feels that small things will get lost in the cracks between the bricks.

Merrill worries that she will be one of those small things.

A gang jumps them on the way from the Hanged Man to the alienage one night. Her companions have weapons in their hands immediately, aiming for hearts and throats. Merrill brings her staff forward and calls power from the Fade.

The kill is not sudden. Merrill sees a shemlen—no, a _man_ , she must think of them as _humans_ here—with a sword advancing on Hawke and she throws a mass of stone at him, tearing up Kirkwall’s pavement. The man is pinned to a building, rock behind and before him, and his staring eyes are on Merrill. “Apostate,” he hisses, blood bubbling at the corners of his mouth. Merrill stands still, looking, until the light fades from his eyes. The blood weeps from his mouth and from between the cracks in the stone.

Merrill goes home and cries huge, loud sobs that the whole alienage must hear. Did that man have someone waiting for him to come home? All Merrill has is an empty hovel in the alienage with cracks in the roof and a cracked Eluvian. All Merrill has is neighbors who stare at her _vallaslin_ and ignore her when she bids them a good morning. She offers a prayer to Falon’Din and curls up under the heavy wool blanket Leandra made for her.

Varric gives her a dagger with flowers patterned on the hilt. Merrill tries to refuse it. Vir Tasallan is the only weapon she needs; she is not like Hawke, she cannot be so close when she finishes a fight.

(Later, she gets a new staff, stronger and better and less Dalish than Vir Tasallan. It sits in her hand more easily, and it does not make her think of being her Keeper’s First. It does not make her think of Tamlen. Later still, they sell Vir Tasallan. Hawke asks many times if Merrill is sure about selling it, and Merrill nods and says it took up too much space in her small home. She hopes it will bring someone else more happiness than it brought her.)

“Humor me, Daisy. You liked the twine,” Varric says, offering the dagger again. Varric makes her feel safe. The knife does not, but she takes it anyway. It hangs heavy on her belt.

Merrill uses the knife once, when she sinks it in Marethari’s chest. Afterwards, she drops the knife. She wants to leave it in the cave, with her Keeper and her Audacity and her hope of understanding what happened to Tamlen.

Hawke takes the blade, cleans it, and carries it down Sundermount. Merrill carries her guilt down the mountain, and it is too large to lose between Kirkwall’s cracks. **  
**

* * *

Sebastian goes on hunts, in happy times, with his father and brothers. Killing a deer is one thing, but even the Tevinter slavers he chases from Starkhaven leave with their lives. He avenges his family through the Chanter’s Board, not just because the Grand Cleric restrains him, but because he does not think he has the strength—spiritual or physical—to fell the Flint Company.

When he kills Lady Harimann, Sebastian is hardened by the four fresh graves in Starkhaven. He leaves the arrow in Johane’s chest and follows Hawke back out to Hightown.

In the Kirkwall Chantry, with the Chant of Light winding around him, Sebastian feels dirty. He spends the night at Andraste’s feet, head bowed and the Canticle of Transfigurations on his lips. He thinks of his parents and brothers—Maker, he had been so _angry_ at them for packing him off to the Chantry; he would do anything to change the last words he spoke to his family. He thinks of how kind the Harimanns once were, and wonders whether Flora was right. Perhaps the poison of Johane’s jealousy had always been there. 

Before sunrise, Elthina touches his head gently and tells him to get some rest. Sebastian retires to his bed and prays to the Maker for Lady Harimann’s soul. He does not feel any cleaner. **  
**

* * *

Fenris is a weapon, forged from pain and ambition and lyrium and broken pieces of Leto—and he has no qualms about any kill. For his first, he puts his hand around a rival magister’s heart and presents it to Danarius. Danarius is pleased. Fenris is not quite proud, but neither is he disturbed.

(Later he discovers his first kill was during the competition for the lyrium markings. He does not remember the day. He does not try to.)

In Seheron, no one tells him to kill for them. No one forces him do anything. It is… _different_ than Tevinter. He appreciates it.

When his master gives the command, he tears through the Fog Warriors who try to defend him.

The regret is worse than the deaths. He runs and does not stop running. He kills without orders to do so, and is not certain whether this makes him a fugitive or just a murderer. Fenris thinks it does not matter, as long as he is not a slave.

He crushes Hadriana’s heart. He puts his fist through Danarius’ head. It is—initially—more satisfying than their everyday slaughter, but no more difficult.

Hawke and Varric tell him he should not kill Varania. Fenris takes no orders, but they have experience with this, so he allows his sister to walk from the Hanged Man with her heart and her memories and her betrayal. That is harder than any kill he _has_ made. **  
**

* * *

Bethany leaves Ferelden having killed nothing more human than a hurlock. Bethany has ice and fire, but her brother and sister have iron and steel, and that has always been enough to keep them safe.

When Carver dies, Bethany feels it as a cold knife in her gut and hot tears pricking at her eyes. She levels darkspawn with her elements and barely speaks until they arrive in Kirkwall.

There is a fight on the steps of the Gallows. Bethany calls up sheets of frost to shield her sister, flame to keep the swords at bay—but not to kill. Father told her never to use her magic to hurt people unless absolutely necessary. “If you do, people will think the lies about mages are true about you.” Bethany carries that lesson across the Waking Sea. She leaves the bloodshed to her sister’s daggers. All Bethany has to do is push people in front of them.

If Captain Ewald notices her magic, he says nothing. They help him in the shadow of the Gallows, and in return he does not condemn her to stay.

They align with the smuggler Athenril. Bethany is relieved; Meeran and his mercenaries scare her. More often than not, her sister—she is twenty-three and strong and clever with words—can talk them out of trouble with smugglers. They keep their noses clean. They keep food on the table.

They do not always keep out of trouble.

It is a bad drop, and there are seven men waiting for them in the warehouse. Bethany can’t just fight to stun them, not when her sister is cornered and bleeding. Her fireball knocks all seven to the ground. One catches the brunt of it and screams so loud that Bethany imagines it woke the Viscount in his Keep. His hair and clothes dissolve in the flame and— _dear Maker_ —his skin is blistering and sloughing off. The burning man falls to his knees. After a while, the screaming stops. Bethany’s stomach is cold iron.

They stay in the warehouse too long so Bethany can be sick behind a pile of sacks. Her sister holds her hair with one hand and a knife with the other, in case there are more thugs on the way. When Bethany has emptied her stomach, they return to Athenril.

“Do you want to talk—?”

“No.”

She doesn’t mention it again. The next morning, her sister buys her a berry pastry from a stall in Hightown. It is sweet and buttery and the best breakfast Bethany has eaten in Kirkwall.

She thinks that a man who was alive yesterday, walking around the city and buying berry pastries and (knowing Kirkwall as she does) winking at Blooming Rose women, is dead today. Because of her, that man lies dead and burned in a warehouse.

It does not get easier no matter how many fights they survive. Going into the Deep Roads, Bethany thinks, will be simple. They will kill darkspawn down there, not people. 

* * *

Varric’s story about his first kill is as tailored as his leather duster. He tells Aveline and Choir Boy that he put a bolt in the stomach of a murderous Carta thug—the kind of lawful heroics the pair would appreciate. He tells Blondie and the elf opposite stories on the same night. Neither believes him, but neither asks again.

Daisy and Sunshine want to know how the life of a surface merchant prince led him to Hawke. Varric chuckles and says that he was born carrying a crossbow instead of Stone sense. Daisy stares like she believes him and Varric pats her thin shoulder. “It doesn’t matter, ladies. I’m on your side.”

Rivaini and Hawke get the most accurate version of the story one night. Varric has a pint of ale in his hand and three more in his belly. He tells them he was fending off an assassination attempt set on him by a lovely maiden’s father.

He does not tell them the name of the maiden. They can probably guess, and Varric still cannot tell that story. 

Varric never thinks of that moment as pivotal. He searches the corpse and takes a small bag of coin, a pair of daggers, and three bottles of poison. As it turns out, he knows the bastard. Poor guy clearly lacked the style to assassinate a merchant prince. Varric walks away from the encounter richer and with a tune on his lips. 

When he pulls the trigger and sees the light leave Bartrand’s haunted eyes, it is not as cathartic as he expected. He replaces Bianca on his back and goes home to the Hanged Man for a drink. Varric does not tell any stories that night.

* * *

Anders, for all his escapes, is a relatively nonviolent mage. He focuses his magic on spirit healing. He only _daydreams_ about Templar-eating tigers. He does not expect to cut down a room full of darkspawn and Templars at Vigil’s Keep. It is not a scene he dwells on. The darkspawn would have killed him, and the Templars may have done worse. He barely remembers how it happened the next day.

When the Warden-Commander asks, he kills plenty of people, smugglers and guards alike. It is easy when he has a cause.

With Justice, it is even easier. Justice has no doubts, the Wardens do not really need them, and Anders’ phylactery is gone. He is a free man—a free mage—and he knows he can help other mages.

He should run screaming in the opposite direction of Free Marches. He should flee to Tevinter and live without the Circle breathing down his neck. But Justice reminds him that the mages in Kirkwall need him; there is nothing for him to change in Tevinter.

Karl is the last straw that brings him to Kirkwall. He starts his clinic in the undercity and helps mage and refugee alike. He trades his Warden maps to a Fereldan smuggler, a dwarf, and a city guardswoman for Karl’s rescue.

They are too late. Anders can hardly bear it when he sees what the Templars have done to his first love. Karl stands with the Chantry brand on his forehead and empty eyes, and Anders cannot see even a shadow of the man he once was.

Justice is even angrier than Anders, more fury than despair, and for just a moment, the spirit brings Karl back. Anders’ heart sings—Justice can do something! Justice can—can take Karl as a host, and he’ll be free. They can find another Fade spirit to save Karl! They can—

They can’t. Anders barely hears what Hawke tells him. He puts the knife between Karl’s ribs and feels it bite into his own heart.

When he gets back to Darktown, he sits on his cot and stares at his mother’s pillow. Anders wishes Ser Pounce-a-lot were here. Justice thinks both Ser Pounce-a-lot and Karl were foolish distractions.

Anders talks to Hawke the next day and falls for another foolish distraction. 

In the end, destroying the Chantry and all its priests is easy. The look on Hawke’s face tears his heart open all over again.

* * *

Hawke’s first kill is with a kitchen knife on the way to the market. Mother sends her out with enough coin for bread and vegetables, and says she should spend any extra coppers on sweets for Bethany and Carver. The eldest Hawke child thinks Bethany and Carver would prefer meat and cheese on the table at dinner.

She has been practicing with the kitchen knife, throwing it at knots on the trees around their little house. At first, it bounced harmlessly off the bark, hilt-first; now, the blade sinks an inch deep into the wood and the handle hums. She has done this so many times that Mother complained about the knife’s dullness. If she buys meat with the leftover coin, perhaps the butcher will sharpen it for free.

She does not recognize the man who stops her with his blade to her throat, but she recognizes his intent. Hawke puts her dull knife in his stomach and tugs.

The highwayman is sobbing, hands pressed against the gaping wound to hold his guts in, and then he is pleading for the Maker to end this. The Maker doesn’t, in the end, but Hawke does. She leaves his body on the side of the dirt path. She takes his boots and sword and satchel, heavy with stolen coin and jewelry. She sells all of it.

Hours later, she comes home, her basket laden with bread and vegetables and meat and cheese and a small bag of sweets for the twins. At her belt, she wears a sharpened kitchen knife and a brand new dagger. She tells Mother she haggled with every merchant. Mother thanks the Maker for her silver tongue.

She cannot sleep that night. She sits by the hearth, poker in hand, and watches the glowing coals sigh to black. Father approaches, quiet and tired but not upset, and he sounds like he already knows what she will say. “Where did you really get the coin?”

“A man tried to rob me.” She stirs the embers. One pops in a shower of sparks, the way Bethany’s hands do when she tries to conjure fire like Father does. “I robbed him instead.”

Father sits beside her. “Can we expect him to tell anyone about this?”

She knows what he is really asking. “Not a chance.” He nods, and Hawke feels his approval more warmly than the glow fading in the hearth. Bethany and Father have enough to worry about with the Templars. Hawke will not bring home any more trouble. She likes Lothering; she doesn’t want to move again.

They lose Father, and then in one fell swoop Lothering and Carver are also gone.

She scrapes and starves and fights to make a life in Kirkwall. Kirkwall rewards her with smugglers and gangs, Gamlen and the Deep Roads. Her sister comes on the expedition—how can Hawke leave Bethany behind, without her and Varric to keep the Templars at bay?

If anyone has to contract the taint, should it not be Hawke? Mother made her swear to keep her sister safe.

She will not make Bethany beg. She will not ask Varric or Aveline to do it. She will not let her sister become a ghoul. Hawke kisses Bethany’s forehead as though she has just finished a bedtime story—something with knights and princesses and a happy ending, like the twins always loved. She says goodbye and sinks the dagger into her sister’s heart.

They cannot bring Bethany with them. Hawke sits for an hour, tears marking clean lines through the dirt on her face. Eventually, they must move on.

Hawke is already blamed for losing one of her siblings. She does not shoulder the burden so well when it is true.

She and Mother reclaim the Amell Estate. It is not worth it. Kirkwall rewards her with Quentin and Qunari. Hawke cobbles together a family of misfits and loses her real family on the way. She becomes a Champion.

The title does not stop Anders and Justice. When the smoke clears and Meredith and Orsino have retreated to prepare, Hawke stands alone at the center, throat tight and eyes blurred, and weighs her dagger in her hand.

What, then, is she supposed to live without? She cannot lose another home. She cannot lose another family member—certainly not two. Can she keep Anders now that he has denied her Kirkwall? She never wants to see his face again. Or she wants to take him back to Darktown and help with the clinic like old times. Or she wants to have never met him. Sebastian is staring with Andraste’s own flames in his eyes.

Her heart is scattered across Thedas: Father in Lothering, Carver on the road to Gwaren, Bethany in the Deep Roads, Mother here in Kirkwall. She has tried to make Kirkwall her home, tried to protect it when she could, and Kirkwall has battered her and orphaned her and it is burning around her ears.

Hawke tightens her grip on the knife. She looks at Anders and sees Bethany. She has put her blades through too many precious things.

This time her own breath, not the loss of another’s, condemns her. “Just go.”

She cannot ask them to stay, to retaliate against bone-deep wrongs, to save the ties binding her forged family together in the City of Chains. She gives the order as a bolt of mercy, a biting blade cushioned with care. She cannot shield the wounds which have only just begun to heal after three—six—seven—ten years, cannot keep them from tearing open again, twice as painful as before. She can shoulder the blame for this as well.

In the end, she loses all three—Anders, Sebastian, and Kirkwall. Hawke wonders whether the knife would have been so hard after all.


End file.
